IN order to enjoy Ease of Mind in our intercourse with the world, we should introduce into our habits of business punctuality, decision, the practice of being beforehand, despatch, and exactness; in our pleasures, harmlessness and moderation; and in all our dealings, perfect integrity and love of truth. Without these observances we are never secure of ease, nor indeed taste it in its highest state. As in most other things, so here, people in general do not aim at more than mediocrity of attainment, and of course usually fall below their standard; whilst many are so busy in running after what should procure them ease, that they totally overlook the thing itself. Ease of mind has the most beneficial effect upon the body, and it is only during its existence that the complicated physical functions are performed with the accuracy and facility which nature designed. It is, consequently, a great preventive of disease, and one of the secret means of effecting a cure when disease has occurred; without it, in many cases, no cure can take place. By ease of mind many people have survived serious accidents, from which nothing else could have saved them, and in every instance is much retarded by the absence of it. Its effect upon the appearance is no less remarkable. It prevents and repairs the ravages of time in a singular degree, and is the best preservative of strength and beauty. It often depends greatly upon health, but health always depends greatly upon it. The torments of a mind ill at ease seem to be less endurable than those of the body; for it scarcely ever happens that suicide is committed from bodily suffering. As far as the countenance is an index, “the vultures of the mind” appear to turn it more mercilessly than any physical pain; and no doubt there have been many who would willingly have exchanged their mental agony for the most wretched existence that penury could produce. From remorse there is no escape. In aggravated cases probably there is no instant, sleeping or waking, in which its influence is totally unfelt. Remorse is the extreme one way; the opposite is that cleanliness of mind which has never been recommended any where to the same extent that it is by the precepts of the Christian religion, and which alone constitutes “perfect freedom.” It would be curious if we could see what effect such purity would have upon the appearance and actions of a human being—a being who lived, as Pope expresses it, in the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.” Goldsmith has beautifully said: How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find. Shakspeare observes: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”[131]